The Triumph of the Diligent Dozen

"Can a society whose culture is so given over to excessive commercialization ever function as a deliberative democracy? Can the public find and develop its own sovereign voice, or has its character been so transformed by commercial media . . . that public life will forever be a stunted thing?" – David Bollier, p. 148 in "Silent Theft."

David Bollier's alarming and vital book, titled "Silent Theft: the Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth," describes a stealthy, violent attack on public life in America. The things we share freely and enjoy in common – our culture and public knowledge, public assets, public services, public spaces, public lands – define us as the American people. Slowly, deliberately, they are becoming private assets and services, private spaces, proprietary knowledge, and trademarked culture, to be marketed for corporate profit. The vibrant body politic is becoming a mundane body economic.

This sea change in our public life is primarily the result of the efforts of 12 archconservative philanthropic foundations that set out 40 years ago to advance an ideology known as "neoliberalism," or "free market theology." These foundations – call them the Diligent Dozen – chose to fund not humanitarian projects but ideological programs, and they were willing to do so decade after decade, spending hundreds of millions in the effort.
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